Update: Armstrong’s response, also via WSJ:
“If you said, ‘Give me one word to sum this all up:’ credibility,” Mr. Armstrong said, according to the Associated Press. “Floyd lost his credibility a long time ago.”
With his longtime coach Johan Bruyneel next to him, Mr. Armstrong said Mr. Landis seemingly pointed the finger at everyone still in the sport. “We have nothing to hide,” he said.
“I’d remind everybody that this is a man that’s been under oath several times and had a very different version,” Mr. Armstrong said. “This is a man that wrote a book for profit that had a completely different version. This is somebody that took, some would say, close to $1 million from innocent people for his defense under a different premise. Now when it’s all run out the story changes.”
We’re looking forward to learning more, and hope that Floyd Landis’ allegations re: Lance Armstrong aren’t true.
Floyd Landis, the only cyclist to lose his Tour de France title, alleges use of performance-enhancing drugs during Armstrong’s Tour runs. On the other hand, Lance has had a longer career than most, and has gone through years of year-round in and out-of-competition testing, and has never been busted.
“This is my body, and I can do anything I want to it…”
This is Big—and Hopefully not True.
Floyd Landis, the victor of the 2006 Tour de France whose victory was nullified after being busted for blood doping, has just detailed in a series of emails how he and other riders, including, allegedly, his teammate Lance Armstrong, were able to fool the drug tests.
Excerpt via Wall Street Journal:
He alleged Mr. Armstrong helped him understand the way the drugs worked. “He and I had lengthy discussions about it on our training rides during which time he also explained to me the evolution of EPO testing and how transfusions were now necessary due to the inconvenience of the new test,” Mr. Landis claimed in the email. He claimed he was instructed by Mr. Bruyneel how to use synthetic EPO and steroids and how to carry out blood transfusions that doping officials wouldn’t be able to detect. Mr. Bruyneel and Mr. Johnson could not be reached for comment. In the same email, Mr. Landis wrote that after breaking his hip in 2003, he flew to Girona, Spain—a training hub for American riders—and had two half-liter units of blood extracted from his body in three-week intervals to be used later during the Tour de France. The extraction, Mr. Landis claimed, took place in Mr. Armstrong’s apartment, where blood bags belonging to Mr. Armstrong and his then-teammate George Hincapie were kept in a refrigerator in Mr. Armstrong’s closet. Mr. Landis said he was asked to check the temperature of the blood daily. According to Mr. Landis, Mr. Armstrong left for a few weeks and asked Mr. Landis to make sure the electricity didn’t go off and ruin the blood…for the rest, click over to The Wall Street Journal.
It’s important to remember that none of this is verified, or substantiated. This does however represent the most open and inside allegations re: cheating that have been related re: Armstrong, a hero to many of us, to date.
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